When humpbacks get stuck in fishing gear, their friends stick around to help

Approaching two whales a few years ago, Rachel Cartwright and her research team noticed something strange. As the younger whale was caught in a fishing line, the adult of the pair started whipping his tail fluke against the water repeatedly. 

Eventually, the smaller whale caught on and started thrashing her tail too. It was as if the adult was showing the juvenile what to do. And gradually the fishing line that she had become entangled in started to come away. “The research assistants named her Taylor, because she was trying to ‘shake it off,’” says Cartwright, a behavioral ecologist at California State University Channel Islands in Camarillo.

In a new study, Cartwright and a team of strandings specialists documented how a “companion whale” tries to help when an individual humpback whale gets entangled in fishing gear. 

In a separate instance, Cartwright was studying humpback reproduction when her team came across a trapped two-year-old whale. An adult whale swam slowly next to her, putting his pectoral fin gently on top of hers or laying with her, snout to snout, at the surface. At one point, he appeared to try to protect her from tiger sharks. “He was swimming behind, flapping them off with his fluke,” she says. 

The second whale swam underneath, lifting the young female to the surface. “It was quite clear that he wasn’t attempting to mate with her,” says Cartwright, as males position themselves on top during mating. 

“To me, what’s really interesting about this situation is that it’s unrelated whales,” she adds. 

On the suggestion of NOAA entanglement expert and co-author Ed Lyman, the team contacted Hawaiian and Alaskan strandings networks to find out how often this happens. When they looked over the data, “we realized that this behavior is more common than we thought,” says Cartwright. 

Out of 414 accounts of entanglement from 2001 through 2023—54 in Hawaii and 260 in Alaska—“companion” whales responded in a helpful way 62 times. 

Olaf Meynecke, a research fellow at Griffith University in Australia, who wasn’t involved in the study, has also seen this in the South Pacific Ocean. His team was trying to disentangle a young whale with a float wrapped around its fins. Two other whales stayed close by. 

One was beside the whale in trouble and another underneath. Meynecke felt like they were saying “if you’re not able to maintain buoyancy, and you start sinking, I will try and lift you up.” 

Meynecke has seen adults trying to help entangled calves, even if the mother is present. “It can be four, five, six other adult whales who are clearly there because they want to support that distressed animal,” he says. But, in the study, more than half of the 62 incidents were between adults, so it’s not just about looking after the young. 

Notably, this behavior between two adult humpback whales has been captured by a National Geographic crew filming Incredible Animal Journeys, too.

Why do whales protect other whales? 

Looking through historical records, the researchers realized this behavior had been seen before—particularly during whaling, which was banned in most countries in 1986. When a victim was captured, “other whales would come in and sit right beside them and stay with them while the capture happened,” says Cartwright. 

This put the responding whales at risk, so the behavior likely became less common. “If you’re the kind of whale that helps other whales, you’re going to get taken,” she says, “so this trait would have become quite rare.”

“The behavior may be a form of affective empathy,” says Anna Moscrop, head of science policy at Whale and Dolphin Conservation. “An individual recognizes an emotional state such as distress, without experiencing the stimuli themselves.” 

Cartwright thinks this might also be an example of behavioral plasticity—the whales are adapting to a changing world where entanglement is now a regular part of life.

Meynecke wonders whether the reason we’re seeing this more is not only because “we’ve got more distressed whales in the ocean” but also because technology like drones makes it easier to find and document these behaviors. 

Keeping whales safe from gear 

Entanglement—in mooring lines, nets, crab pots, and other discarded fishing gear—is an ever-growing threat. “Over 80 percent of whales will be entangled at some point in their lives, and up to 25 percent might be entangled every year but self-release,” says Cartwright. 

Seeing whales desperately trying to help each other is “absolutely horrible,” Meynecke says. “These poor animals know exactly what’s going on, and they just cannot do anything. It goes beyond just an individual. It’s a highly stressful situation for a number of whales within the area who are communicating and trying to assist.”

What’s more, entanglement—a major cause of whale mortality—is preventable.

“The best way to protect marine mammals from fishing entanglements is to reduce the risk of contact between them and the gear,” Moscrop adds. One way of doing this is using fishing gear that minimizes the lines left in the water, which “drastically reduces the chances of entanglement and saves whales.” 

This is something we can all play a part in. “There are choices we make as consumers,” says Cartwright. “There are lots of options to choose sustainably caught fish.” 

Watch more of the interaction between a whale and her “companion” on Incredible Animal Journeys, now streaming on Disney+.